Each New Year's Eve while others excitedly waiting for a ball to drop in some distant metropolitan city, I prep a spreadsheet. The next morning begins a new year of not only bird counting but documenting each species which travels through our yard. Getting the winter well documented is crucial, as some of our visitors are drop-ins from Canada who have migrated to "warmth" of Wisconsin.
Today, we had the first Common Redpolls to have ever visited our yard. I added them to this year's spreadsheet and then had a realization, I'd never totaled the number of species across years. I had no idea how many different species had visited the yard over the course of the last few years.
One of the Common Redpolls who came to visit today.
It turns out that the Common Redpoll makes number 58. This also means that my original goal (yet to be met) of having 50 species in the yard in a single year ought to be more than attainable. If last year's total of 47 is any indication (and we've already got 18 so far for 2016), 2016 could be the year. Maybe I need to think about upping the goal from 50 to 60 or 65.
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